DEVELOPMENT OF A NOVEL FULLY COUPLED SOLVER IN OPENFOAM: STEADY-STATE INCOMPRESSIBLE TURBULENT FLOWS

In this work a block coupled algorithm for the solution of three-dimensional incompressible turbulent flows is presented. A cell-centered finite-volume method for unstructured grids is employed. The interequation coupling of the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations is obtained using a SIMPLE-type algorithm with a Rhie-Chow interpolation technique. Due to the simultaneous solution of momentum and continuity equations, implicit block coupling of pressure and velocity variables leads to faster convergence compared to classical, loosely coupled, segregated algorithms of the SIMPLE family of algorithms. This gain in convergence speed is accompanied by an improvement in numerical robustness. Additionally, a two-equation eddy viscosity turbulence model is solved in a segregated fashion. The substnatially improved performance of the block coupled approach compared to the segregated approach is demonstrated in a set of test cases. It is shown that the scalability of the coupled solution algorithm with increasing numbers of cells is nearly linear. To achieve this scalability, an algebraic multigrid solver for block coupled systems of equations has been implemented and used as linear solver for the system of block equations. The presented algorithm has been entirely embedded into the leading open-source computational fluid dynamics (CFD) library OpenFOAM.